Mice
by penknife1
Summary: When Erik met Charles. XavierxMagneto pastfic, written for Clara in the 2006 XMM Ficathon.


Xavier should not have been worth a second glance. He was easy enough to sum up in one. Good clothes showing just enough wear to make it clear they weren't being worn to impress, good leather briefcase, class ring. The path from private school through fraternity to medical degree and then private practice at something not overly taxing was written clearly enough on him.

Erik's gaze should not have lingered long enough to add in the cautious curl of Xavier's fingers around his notebook, as if guarding secrets there, and the deliberate distance Xavier put between himself and the next student at the laboratory bench. Neither fit well into the picture Erik had constructed. Erik frowned. He disliked it when people failed to obligingly fit into their proper categories.

The class was chemistry, which Erik did in fact like, all mathematics and precise work by hand, not the clumsy tangle of trying to describe in words things that could not practically be done that sometimes frustrated him about physics. Better to describe them in numbers, and better yet to try them out in practice. Engineering proper was even more satisfying, with its focus on what could be drawn and built.

Xavier began setting up his equipment, moving neatly enough, although Erik would have arranged things more efficiently to avoid wasted motion. He could not see what dark secrets were concealed in the notebook. Its pages might even be blank, which was even more interesting, as it suggested the habits of secrecy.

Xavier looked up, catching his eye with an expression of mild curiosity. Erik looked down deliberately at his own work. He had no desire to encourage overtures of insincere friendship, and felt that overtures of any other sort were best kept out of the classroom. Not that he was sure that was the reason for the thoughtful glances Xavier kept giving him, but adding _queer_ to the list of characteristics did make his mental picture of Xavier resolve itself into a clear pattern again, albeit one that led to rather more self-medication and solitary visits to bars.

Erik told himself that having thus classified Xavier within the taxonomy of maladjusted academia, he was excused from having to pay him any further attention. He kept finding his gaze drifting in that direction, however, and more often than not when it did he caught Xavier quickly looking away. At the point at which Erik caught himself thinking that Xavier's hands cupped around a flask were very pretty, he resolved that this was obviously the sort of impulse that needed to be gotten out of his system before it got worse.

At the beginning of the third week he caught Xavier on the way out of the classroom. He felt it was only practical to resolve this early enough that they could be past the whole thing before the first lab project results were due. "You've been watching me," he said.

Xavier looked like he wanted to deny it and then thought better of it. "You were credited on that mouse study Dr. Vanderwald did last year," he said instead. "I keep meaning to ask him about the behavioral results, but I could ask you instead."

"The behavioral results were meaningless," Erik said. "The irradiated mice behaved atypically because they were physically damaged." He shrugged. "Anyhow, I was only involved in the research to the extent of designing the equipment." He had been perversely fascinated with the task, and persevered despite quickly understanding that it would mean a resurgence of certain nightmares.

"That's too bad," Xavier said. He smiled, with a warmth that made Erik feel confident of a final sum to his calculations. "I'm Charles Xavier, by the way. I never remember everyone's names from the first day of class."

Erik felt that if he intended to solve his Charles Xavier problem with casual sex followed by an agreement to avoid one another to prevent awkwardness, he ought to stop talking about laboratory equipment. "What's a nice medical student like you doing tormenting mice?" he found himself asking instead.

"I'm a nice psychology student, actually, and I'm interested in whether any particular atypical behaviors were produced. I'd also like to point out that I wasn't the one who did anything to the mice."

"I suspect they've all expired or been dissected, or I'd suggest you ask Vanderwald if he'd let you psychoanalyze them."

"I don't expect psychoanalyzing the mice would be terribly illuminating. It's a simple life, being a mouse. They don't have a lot of conflicts."

The wind was picking up, sending leaves scudding across the sidewalk, and Charles had to cling to his hat to keep it from escaping him. He laughed, looking suddenly very young. Behind them girls in tartan skirts moved in packs, some pursued by pressed-looking young men with their books stacked very neatly.

It suddenly seemed an impossible place to discuss psychology, sex, or the short unhappy lives of laboratory rodents. "Come with me," Erik said, striding off in a direction that was not toward the library.

Charles raised an eyebrow at him, but followed him. "Where are we going?"

"To a bar."

"A bar?"

"Where they serve alcohol," Erik said. "Think of it as organic chemistry."

"I don't drink," Charles said.

"You won't survive graduate school if you don't drink."

"I mean, in bars."

"Isn't solitary drinking a sign of poor mental hygiene?"

"I've heard that," Charles said. "But I don't like bars."

"We could get a fifth of gin and go back to my apartment," Erik said.

"We could," Charles said. "If the gin is an essential part of the process."

"It might be."

"Well, then."

Charles insisted on contributing toward the bottle of gin, which Erik accepted, although he gave back the change. Once they reached his apartment, Erik lowered the shades and poured the drinks. Charles drank in a deliberate fashion that Erik felt increased the probability of eventual self-medication considerably. Erik let him finish enough of the third drink that he felt it had probably taken the edge off his self-consciousness and then sat down beside him on the sofa and kissed him.

Charles went rigid with shock and pushed Erik away, staring at him with wide eyes. He doesn't_ know_, Erik thought, caught entirely off-guard. He was very aware of the metal in the door frame across the room and forced himself not to make an abrupt exit from his own apartment. The situation called for damage control, not flight.

"Know what?" Charles said.

"Don't they cover this sort of thing in your training? Abnormal psychology?"

Charles looked like he wanted to laugh, and also like the joke wasn't particularly funny. "Abnormal psychology."

"Don't they say it's unhealthy to repress these things?"

"You should talk," Charles said.

"I don't," Erik said. "Repress, that is." He smiled as charmingly as he could manage. "Why should I?"

"You are one tremendous knot of repression," Charles said with what sounded like alcohol-fueled honesty. "You've probably forgotten what some of the things you're repressing actually are. You make my head hurt to sit next to in class."

"You don't sit next to me in class," Erik said.

"There's a reason for that."

"Why are you psychoanalyzing me?"

"Because you made a pass at me."

"Did you even take abnormal psychology?"

"I didn't feel I needed to," Charles said. "And I'm not psychoanalyzing you because I don't understand that you're queer, I'm psychoanalyzing you because that's the sort of thing I do when I don't know what to say."

"You don't get to call people queer unless you are, too," Erik said. "It's one of the rules. It's good to know the rules. It helps keep anyone from having to get hurt."

"Are you threatening me?" Charles sounded more bemused than alarmed.

"Do I have to?"

"No," Charles said, considering him seriously. "But you don't believe that."

"You don't know what I believe."

"I don't want to know what you believe," Charles said. "I wish I had that luxury." He looked drawn tight, as if any minute he would say something worse. Erik wasn't sure what that was likely to be. He was at least fairly sure that if Charles intended to hit him, he would stand up first, and the edge of the coffee table was metal.

"Comfortable ignorance?"

"I hear good things about it." Charles considered Erik again. "I don't think you even wanted to make a pass at me."

"It would simplify things," Erik said.

"You could put me into a neat box."

"In which I'm sure you don't feel you belong."

"You don't have to kiss me to prove that I'm no different from you."

"You're nothing like me."

"Probably not," Charles said. He put his head in his hands. Erik had the urge to pour him another drink. He lifted Charles's chin and kissed him again instead, angrily.

There was an odd tension in the air between them, something that Charles was struggling to control, and before Erik could work out how he knew that, he felt that control break. It felt like being very apologetically punched in the face. He could feel his heart beating in the wrong rhythm, and see his own blue eyes go wide. All over the apartment, metal things began to shake.

"Oh, damn," Charles said.

Erik felt his own fear changing to the sort of adrenaline rush he'd learned to let take him where it would. "Does this always happen when you kiss men?"

"I wouldn't really know," Charles said, in a light tone that belied his underlying combination of panic and fascination. Erik could feel the table trembling against Charles's knee. On the bar, the gin bottle rattled wildly. "What's the matter with the gin bottle?"

"It has a metal cap."

"And you ..." Charles met his eyes, and the sense of double vision strengthened for a moment and then stopped. Erik was suddenly painfully aware of his own body, in a way that he usually tried not to be. Charles shook his head. "What do you suppose would happen if we actually tried to have sex?"

Erik realized rather to his surprise that wasn't the foremost thing on his mind at the moment. "What does all of this have to do with mice?"

Charles turned up his hands helplessly. "It's possible that looking for mouse models for telepathy is a doomed endeavor, but for obvious personal reasons I'm interested in making the attempt."

"None of the mice seemed to be telepathic," Erik said.

One corner of Charles's mouth twitched. "Would you know?"

At some point the nerve-jangling ringing of metal had ceased. Erik considered the spilled gin on the table, with its suggestive curves. He had the itch for a pencil in his hand. "What about computer models?" he suggested, although that wasn't exactly what he meant. He wasn't sure exactly what he meant.

"I'd rather put my faith in mutated mice than in vacuum tubes."

"Transistors," Erik said. "Do you actually know anything about computers?"

"Approximately as much as you know about the human mind."

"I know more than I want to about the human mind."

"We're not all like that," Charles said, as if in answer to some accusation Erik hadn't made, not aloud.

Erik offered potential ones, in what he considered a spirit of cooperation. "Queer? Misanthropic? Tormentors of mice?"

Charles looked across at the drawn shades, frowning. "I would like to say for the record that I have absolutely no desire to hurt you, which you seem eager for me to do to provide justification for your view of the world. Not that I imagine you need it."

"You don't know," Erik said.

"Not yet," Charles said.

"Tell me about what you want your mice to do."

"Show me what you can do."

Erik smiled a little. "Admit that you're queer."

"You don't ask for much, do you?"

"I'm not asking," Erik said. "I'm bargaining."

"You don't have to," Charles said. "I'll tell you what I know." He smiled a little wryly in return. "To the extent that I do know, and am not at the moment entirely adrift."

Erik shook his head at him. "You're far too trusting."

Charles's voice was carefully light. "Me and the mice?"

Erik kept his own voice carefully steady. "You and the mice."

"I do have a _few_ advantages over the mice," Charles said solemnly, and although he tried not to, Erik couldn't help smiling.


End file.
